149 First Sentence Quotes

The opening line of a novel holds incredible power—it can captivate readers instantly, set the tone for the entire narrative, and leave an indelible mark on our minds. Whether it’s a chilling sentence that sends shivers down your spine, a whimsical phrase that sparks curiosity, or a profound statement that makes you pause and ponder, the first sentence is a gateway to the world within the pages. In this specially curated collection, we invite you on a journey through the top 149 first sentence quotes from literary masterpieces both classic and contemporary. Prepare to be enchanted, intrigued, and inspired by the art of the perfect opening line.

1. “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” - Rafael Sabatini

2. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” - C.S. Lewis

3. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” - Leo Tolstoy

4. “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” - Franz Kafka

5. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” - Daphne du Maurier

6. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” - J.D. Salinger

7. “At school I was careful not to look like I watched everything, but I did.” - Amanda Davis

8. “When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.” - Katherine Dunn

9. “As the ordinary violence of dawn sweeps across the lower Coromandel coast, a sprawling village comes into view.” - David Davidar

10. “Marley was dead: to begin with.” - Charles Dickens

11. “Baby," groaned the guy-Ted? Tad?-something like that-and crushed his lips against the side of her neck, shoving her face against the wall of the toilet stall.” - Jennifer Weiner

12. “This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.” - Barbara Kingsolver

13. “In the midst of a thick forest, there was a castle that gave shelter to all travelers overtaken by night on their journey: lords and ladies, royalty and their retinue, humble wayfarers.” - Italo Calvino

14. “From above, start with the privileged view. ” - Maureen Howard

15. “Stavia saw herself as in a picture, from the outside, a darkly cloaked figure moving along a cobbled street, the stones sheened with a soft, early spring rain.” - Sheri S. Tepper

16. “Toward the end of February 1954, James Beard was at work in his Greenwich Village kitchen doing what he most loved to do: cooking delicious meals.” - Laura Shapiro

17. “Women have always been spies.” - Harriet Rubin

18. “Jerrie Cobb reached down and pulled the heavy layers of arctic clothing over her navy blue linen dress. ” - Martha Ackmann

19. “I held her feet in my hands.” - Geoff Nicholson

20. “From the air Anguilla looked narrow, flat, and scrubby, but that was only part of the picture.” - Melinda Blanchard

21. “The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road.” - Alex Garland

22. “The amber light came on.” - José Saramago

23. “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” - Harper Lee

24. “My lifelong involvement with Mrs Dempster began at 5:58 o'clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.” - Robertson Davies

25. “The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.” - Steve Almond

26. “Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.” - George Eliot

27. “I know what you want to hear, doctor, but I'm sorry, you're not going to pry some sordid confession out of me.” - Barbara Mujica

28. “All right, don't scoff, mock or disbelieve: we live in mortal fear of not-quite-twins.” - Kamila Shamsie

29. “Happy endings aren't for cowards.” - Jill A. Davis

30. “They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.” - Jean Rhys

31. “Lord Peter Wimsey stretched himself luxuriously between the sheets provided by the Hotel Meurice.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

32. “That night Flora wanted to eat watermelon.” - Dorit Rabinyan

33. “When my nose finally stops bleeding and I've disposed of the bloody paper towels, Teddy Barnes insists on driving me home in his ancient Honda Civic, a car that refuses to die and that Teddy, cheap as he is, refuses to trade in.” - Richard Russo

34. “The Rue du Coq d'Or, Paris, seven in the morning.” - George Orwell

35. “Quite like old times,' the room says.” - Jean Rhys

36. “I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharan, in Miraflores.” - Mario Vargas Llosa

37. “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” - Margaret Atwood

38. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” - Charles Dickens

39. “A screaming comes across the sky.” - Thomas Pynchon

40. “Sometimes when you work in advertising you'll get a product that's really garbage and you have to make it seem fantastic, something that is essential to the continued quality of life.” - Augusten Burroughs

41. “Amy called the whale punkin.” - Christopher Moore

42. “Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.” - Christopher Moore

43. “The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. ” - dan savage

44. “On December 7, 2059, Emilio Sandoz was released from the isolation ward of Salvator Mundi Hospital in the middle of the night and transported in a bread van to the Jesuit residence at Number 5 Borgo Santo Spirito, a few minutes' walk across St. Peter's Square from the Vatican.” - Mary Doria Russell

45. “Celestina Giuliani learned the word "slander" at her cousin's baptism.” - Mary Doria Russell

46. “I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.” - Orson Scott Card

47. “A squat gray building of only thirty-four stories.” - Aldous Huxley

48. “All this happened, more or less.” - Kurt Vonnegut

49. “The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.” - H. G. Wells

50. “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.” - M. T. Anderson

51. “Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.” - William Gibson

52. “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.” - H.G. Wells

53. “CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble. ” - Audrey Niffenegger

54. “He- for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it- was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. ” - Virginia Woolf

55. “There is no man so unsuited for the task of speaking about memory as I am, for I find scarcely a trace of it in myself, and I do not believe there is another man in the world so hideously lacking in it.” - Geoff Ryman

56. “Who was blowing on the nape of my neck.” - David Mitchell

57. “Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. ” - Isabel Allende

58. “Call me Ishmael.” - Herman Melville

59. “I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. ” - Orhan Pamuk

60. “On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.” - Jhumpa Lahiri

61. “I remember hating having to cross over the Broadway Bridge again, having to leave the peninsula neighborhood and go back to my apartment in downtown Boston.” - Michael Patrick MacDonald

62. “Twelve years after Robin's death, no one knew any more about how he had ended up hanged from a tree in his own yard than they had on the day it happened.” - Donna Tartt

63. “Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?” - Donna Tartt

64. “See the child.” - Cormac McCarthy

65. “At the age of three my grand aunt proclaimed her independence by categorically refusing to have her feet bound, resolutely tearing off the bandages as fast as they were applied.” - Adeline Yen Mah

66. “Thunder sounded, very near, and the child woke.” - Donna Woolfolk Cross

67. “All the June Saturday afternoon Sam Pollit's children were on the lookout for him as they skated round the dirt sidewalks and seamed old asphalt of R Street and Reservoir Road that bounded the deep-grassed acres of Tohoga House, their home.” - Christina Stead

68. “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.” - Italo Calvino

69. “Although I'm afraid I don't get too many clients these days!” - Patrick McCabe

70. “Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway.” - zadie smith

71. “At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring.” - Charles Frazier

72. “Her first name was India-she was never able to get used to it.” - Evan S. Connell

73. “Here was this man Tom Guthrie in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the sun was just coming up.” - Kent Haruf

74. “Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.” - P.D. James

75. “It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.” - Lois Lowry

76. “Ilium, New York, is divided into three parts.” - Kurt Vonnegut

77. “First snow: it came this year late in November.” - John Updike

78. “The sky is white.” - Diana Abu-Jaber

79. “When Matussem Ramoud opened his eyes each morning, his wife would still not be there. ” - Diana Abu-Jaber

80. “I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel.” - Haruki Murakami

81. “It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition.” - Haruki Murakami

82. “I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.” - Haruki Murakami

83. “All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.” - kiran desai

84. “The house in which the fourteen sisters of Emilio Montez O'brien lived, radiated femininity.” - Oscar Hijuelos

85. “At last, the luminous match was struck and the day was lit.” - Dorit Rabinyan

86. “It' her life, and she' in the middle of it.” - Esmeralda Santiago

87. “My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. ” - Amy Tan

88. “In the twenty-one years I lived with my mother, we moved at least twenty times.” - Esmeralda Santiago

89. “The night before I left my mother, I wrote a letter. ” - Esmeralda Santiago

90. “My suffering left me sad and gloomy.” - Yann Martel

91. “The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

92. “An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday in December, knocked down tables of fried food, overturned Indians' stalls and lottery kiosks, and bit four people who happened to cross its path.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

93. “I never believed in dharma. karma, reincarnation, or any of that spiritual crap, which caused sort of a problem growing up because my parents are devout Hindus.” - Sonia Singh

94. “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.” - Dodie Smith

95. “If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face. My name once meant daughter, grandaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out; Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness.I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.” - Alice Hoffman

96. “Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?” - Bertrand Russell

97. “On the first day of Human Sexuality, Ruth Ramsey wore a short lime green skirt, a clingy black top, and strappy high-heeled sandals, the kind of attention-getting outfit she normally wouldn't have worn on a date---not that she was going on a lot of dates these days---let alone to work. ” - Tom Perrotta

98. “In the time it takes for her to walk from the bathhouse at the seawall of Fortune's Rocks, where she has left her boots and has discreetly pulled off her stockings, to the waterline along which the sea continually licks the pink and silver sand, she learns about desire. ” - Anita Shreve

99. “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.” - Shirley Jackson

100. “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.” - James Crumley

101. “Norman Bates heard the noise and a shock went through him.” - Robert Bloch

102. “Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.” - J.K. Rowling

103. “Six people were thinking of Rosemary Barton who had died nearly a year ago...” - Agatha Christie

104. “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” - Neil Gaiman

105. “Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.” - Joe Haldeman

106. “It was hot, the night we burned Chrome.” - William Gibson

107. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” - J.K. Rowling

108. “It's not that I was an outright nitwit of a child.” - Augusten Burroughs

109. “It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.” - Richard Bach

110. “It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwest state. There wasn't so much wilderness around you couldn't see the town. But on the other hand there wasn't so much town you couldn't see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness. The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and a large ravine to tumble in and yell across. And the town was full of...Boys.And it was the afternoon of Halloween.And all the houses shut against a cool wind.And the town was full of cold sunlight.But suddenly, the day was gone.Night came out from under each tree and spread.” - Ray Bradbury

111. “There is a delicate-looking plant native to North America called bleeding heart.” - Josh Aterovis

112. “Die Stunde, in der das Mädchen ohne Namen seine Geschichte verlor, war die letzte des Tages.” - Christoph Marzi

113. “There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

114. “Indian summer is like a woman.” - Grace Metalious

115. “It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.” - Frederick Forsyth

116. “Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.” - Lynda Barry

117. “Ray Bannister started to build the guillotine the day Jerry Renault returned to Monument.” - Robert Cormier

118. “Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.” - Adam Rapp

119. “Simon Glass was easy to hate. I never knew exactly why, there was just too much to pick from. I guess, really, we each hated him for a different reason, but we didn't realize it until the day we killed him.” - Gail Giles

120. “In Santiago, the capital of the kingdom of Chile, at the moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands lost their lives, a young Spaniard called Jeronimo Rugera was standing beside one of the pillars in the prison to which he had been committed on a criminal charge, and he was about to hang himself.” - Heinrich von Kleist

121. “On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap.” - Adam Rapp

122. “In M---, an important town in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O---, a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-brought-up children, inserted the following announcement in the newspapers: that she had, without knowledge of the cause, come to find herself in a certain situation; that she would like the father of the child she was expecting to disclose his identity to her; that she was resolved, out of consideration to her family, to marry him.” - Heinrich von Kleist

123. “I don't know if I killed my dad or not.” - Jeanne Willis

124. “So now get up.'Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned toward the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.” - Hilary Mantel

125. “I was about thirteen when I started letting boys feel me up.” - Rebbecca Ray

126. “The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.” - George Orwell

127. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It was the future, and everything sucked.” - Greg Nagan

128. “Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.” - Rick Riordan

129. “I should probably start with the blood.” - Robin Wasserman

130. “I bear a deep red stain that runs from my left shoulder down to my right hip, a trail left by the herbwitch's poison that my mother used to try to expel me from her womb.” - Robin LaFevers

131. “It's strange how a plan can unfold sometimes—an umbrella shooting up at the touch of a button and extending out in all directions quickly, effortlessly.” - Elissa Janine Hoole

132. “They say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that's not how it happened for me.” - Lauren Oliver

133. “His first memory is an execution.” - Blaine Harden

134. “Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.” - Carl Hiaasen

135. “Thanatos, der alles wusste, stieg in Erwartung des Kommenden die Niederenslinger Hügel hinauf zum Plateau, suchte einen Baumstrunk, setzte sich und wartete. Er trug einen schwarzen Aktenkoffer bei sich, der alle Geduld der Welt enthielt.” - Helmut Krausser

136. “Midnight was closing in, the one-legged woman was grievously burned, and the Mumbai police were coming for Abdul and his father.” - Katherine Boo

137. “This morning, my mother didn't get out of bed.” - Melina Marchetta

138. “Unfortunately, I am only myself.” - Lisa Burstein

139. “On the same day, two murders.” - Jean Zimmerman

140. “My story ended where so many stories have ended since the Rising: with a man—in this case, my adoptive brother and best friend, Shaun—holding a gun to the base of my skull as the virus in my blood betrayed me, transforming me from a thinking human being into something better suited to a horror movie.” - Mira Grant

141. “Goldenrod Moram had a first name that sounded like it belonged in the middle of a fairy tale, where she would be the dazzling princess in need of rescuing.” - Sarvenaz Tash

142. “3 years, 1 month, 1 week, and 6 days since I'd seen daylight.” - Susanne Winnacker

143. “When you've been struck by lightning as many times as I have, you start to expect the worst pretty much all the time.” - Jennifer Bosworth

144. “Jett Gallatin expected trouble in Alsop, Texas—but not zombies.” - Mercedes Lackey

145. “There once was a woman named Story Easton who couldn't decide if she should kill herself, or eat a double cheeseburger.” - Elizabeth Leiknes

146. “Deep down, Story Easton knew what would happen if she attempted to off herself—she would fail It was a matter of probability. This was not a new thing, failure. She was, had always been, a failure of fairy-tale proportion. Quitting wasn’t Story’s problem. She had tried, really tried, lots of things during different stages of her life—Girl Scours, the viola, gardening, Tommy Andres from senior year American Lit—but zero cookie sales, four broken strings, two withered azalea bushes, and one uniquely humiliating breakup later, Story still had not tasted success, and with a shriveled-up writing career as her latest disappointment, she realized no magic slippers or fairy dust was going to rescue her from her Anti-Midas Touch. No Happily Ever After was coming. So she had learned to find a certain comfort in failure. In addition to her own screw-ups, others’ mistakes became cozy blankets to cuddle, and she snuggled up to famous failures like most people embrace triumph. The Battle of Little Bighorn—a thing of beauty. The Bay of Pigs—delicious debacle. The Y2K Bug—gorgeously disappointing fuck-up. Geraldo’s anti-climactic Al Capone exhumation—oops! Jaws III—heaven on film. Tattooed eyeliner—eyelids everywhere, revolting. Really revolting. Fat-free potato chips—good Lord, makes anyone feel successful.” - Elizabeth Leiknes

147. “Harry was bleeding.” - J.K. Rowling

148. “Legends are born to every generation.” - Michael Jay

149. “He was the deadliest man in Texas, on that they all agreed.” - James Carlos Blake